It's FRIDAY baby, and you have earned a beer or three with us this week! A manager was fired, but to Kelly's disappointment, it wasn't Brendan Rodgers. Bruno and Wolves part ways after their lost to West Ham at the weekend drops them into the relegation zone. Three hat-tricks and three red cards grace the weekend, and Kelly and Gordon pay dearly for it. Three shots and beers to boot cause all sorts of mayhem this week, to the hosts, to the script, and to the weekend prediction. One in which Kelly not only predicts the score line of the Forest Villa game, but also an on field display of passion. Also below is the full read out of Graham's history piece. Check it out!
Midlands Derby – Well actually Villa is located in the West Midlands and as a district inside the city of Birmingham you would think that their natural rival would be Birmingham City but
actually their biggest rivalry of all seems to be with West Bromwich Albion. On the other hand
Nottingham Forest identify themselves as an East Midlands team and their biggest rivalry is
with Derby County, Leicester and obviously their next door neighbors Notts County whose
home ground is actually less than 300 yards away from their own City Ground. Which happens to be the shortest distance between two English professional teams.
So how about the rivalry between the Aston Martin race car and the Raleigh Bicycle. I have
always assumed that Aston Martin cars were constructed in the midlands but it turns out that
the Aston in Aston Martin refers to a testing track on Aston Hill which is located closer to
London than Birmingham… Shows how little I know about history although I am correct
regarding Nottingham and the Raleigh Bicycle. I understand that during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s
ninety-five percent of bicycles sold in the US originated in Nottingham.
So why did I get excited when I first saw this fixture for this weekend? Well for me I was most
active as a football fan during the late 70’s and early 80’s when English sides dominated Europe.
The Big Four of the day were Forest, Villa, Leeds and Liverpool. You could argue that they were
the Big Four in Europe and not just England. In the eleven seasons from 74/75 through 84/85
those four English sides made it to nine European Cup (Champions League) finals whichincluded back to back winners Forest in 1979 & 80 and Villa 1982. Leeds were beaten finalist in’75 Liverpool made up the other 5 final appearances’ winning 4 and losing just the one.Both Villa and Forest have also won the European Super Cup – Forest twice and Villa once a featthat not many English teams can claim. Forest has won the English League once and the FA Cup twice to go along with their twoEuropean Championships while Villa have been crowned English League champions on 7occasions to add to their 7 FA Cups trophies so between them there has been quite a haul ofsilverware.So I was a little surprised and even disappointed that there was not a juicier back story to comeout of this particular fixture although on September 11 th 2016 Aston Villa tied 2-2 withNottingham Forest in the Championship, the second tier of English football and what wasspecial about this particular game? Well it was the very first time that two former EuropeanChampions have met in a second tier league game anywhere in Europe and even though theyplayed each other a further five times in the EFL Championship they are still the only twoformer European Champions to have played against each other EVER in the second tier.
